The UC Marketing Capstone Experience

Promotion

March 20, 2017

As we prepare for the second PR meeting with Drew, we also started preparing our phase 2 report and recommendations. We came up with several promotional messages and sales strategies. We used all the influence strategies to come up with a solid promotional base. It was surprising to see how the application of influence strategies made a significant difference in the ads. Apart from that, we have completed our second research that was specifically targeted to the Tide Pod users only.

We are now working on redesigning the website. The website will also have most of the influence strategies. We look forward to meeting with Drew. Just like the first day of the capstone class, I am equally excited and nervous for the upcoming tasks.

January 23, 2017

Imagine getting to know that you are going to work for a company that you have always heard about – P&G! I could feel the excitement and nervousness at the same time. After attending two initial client meetings, I can say that P&G is truly a dream workplace for marketers. Sheer professionalism but a fun workplace was my first impression.

Being the beginning of the semester, this endeavor was always going to be a challenging one. As expected, the first client meeting (which was the day after our first class!) revealed how great this company was and how we needed to manage our time and resources efficiently! Unlike other internships, here, we were told that only ideas are not enough but an implementation of those ideas should be done!

We are six people divided into two groups working on two different projects. We all met Uttam & Kristin and they guided us through all the upcoming projects. They gave us an overview about 5 projects and asked us to pick one that we felt was the most appealing one. Baliey, Serkan and I picked the Tide on Demand project.

I felt that I could personally relate to the project since running out of detergents at critical moments has always been an issue for me! I believe you generate better ideas when you are personally involved in the problem. To get a better understanding of our specific project, we met Rohan, who’d be our guide throughout the project. This meeting solved most of our doubts and we gained a clear understanding of it. Rohan explained to us what they expect from us and how are we going to go ahead with the project.

So far it has been exciting and a challenging journey but we look forward to exploring the marketing world and learn!

June 20, 2016

I think we're starting to really get some good direction with our plan. We're still in qualitative stages, which might yield more insights. We might be able to come up with two or three solid directions for our client to go, but one seems to be really taking shape. We all agree on it, too, as an important and effective direction for our client to take. I'm excited about how we can make our strategy stand out from competitors' and target at least two segments. I think one of our biggest obstacles will be how to choose the marketing channels for our advertisements. How will we present the ads, and how can they differ among mediums?

June 22, 2015

This week has been more about time management. The only thing that we will never have-is TIME. Because every time we feel that we are on track, something wouldn’t work out and we would be thrown off-track. But luckily, we manage to figure it out on time and get back on the game.

Collecting responses from retail customers is what are focus was this week. It wasn’t as easy as we assumed it to be! Evans landscaping has 3 commercial stores out of which 2 stores have a good flow of retail customers. The task was difficult, as the customers would hesitate to spend time filling in the surveys. Moreover, due to the rain, the customer footfall was pretty low. After speaking to our client, he agreed to offer incentives to the customers to fill in the surveys. A ‘$10 off’ coupon served as a motivation for them to spend few minutes and fill in the survey for us.

We also visited a couple of competitor stores to get a different perspective about how different companies run their business. It is interesting to see how they conduct their operations and strive to improve customer’s shopping experience.

We are almost towards the end of our data collection phase and can’t wait to start with our analysis. Important learning from this week-never underestimate any task- a process as simple as collecting around 30 good responses can take weeks! Then again, multi-tasking is what helps us to stay on track.

May 24, 2015

Our group was pretty nervous for our initial client meeting with Live Well and Children's so we got together the night before our meeting. This really helped us bring our research together and get on the same page as a team. After getting together as a team, some of our nerves had eased and we felt much more comfortable heading into our initial client meeting.

The next day we met with our client. We created a 1-pager for our client, which they really seemed to like. It included an introduction of our team, our Capstone process, a rough timeline, and the opportunities we found through our research. The opportunities we outlined fell right in line with what they were looking for which gave us a big boost of confidence. While there are other things we will be working on, it seems like they want us to really focus on the 4P's. It should be an interesting and exciting project.

Our next step is to draft a charter to deliver to our client this coming week so that it can be revised and agreed on. We also want to create a milestone timeline so we can keep on track throughout the term. Once that is settled, we will be ready to really get to work!

March 22, 2015

As both a full-time staff member at UC and a part-time student, I get to enjoy both being a student and working with them. This week, I was lucky enough to utilize my own AVM skills to teach a UC colleague the ropes. We are working on a project for gender-inclusive housing and determined it would be extremely important to target our marketing message. Brandy (my colleague) and I went through the AVM workshop and did our own AVM in regards to the benefits GIH (gender inclusive housing) offers. In two weeks, we will be doing this workshop as a part of QueerCat Pride Week to begin to get feedback from the student population, as well as the staff and faculty, in regards to what is the most important message to convey.

It has been enlightening to take a tool that has been learned so recently, utilize it for my own capstone prject, and then turn around to use it for my professional life too. I LOVE AVM, and better yet, I cannot wait to host my own workshop for staff and students on it regarding GIH at UC.

March 7, 2015

This was an exciting week for our team! We had our second project meeting with Drew, and it went about as well as we could have hoped. Going into the meeting, we felt good in terms of understanding our client, what they need, but were having trouble putting our ideas into concrete, measurable action. Although after our meeting, we regrouped and are looking at a major shift in terms of where we lie in the big picture, it somehow seems like we've made a lot of progress. Our team's initial strategy placed the client in Q1, but after our first meeting with Drew, we decided to change to Q3--at that point we thought our initial view of the category and competitive landscape was too narrow, and we opened it up so that we could account for services like Lynda.com into the competitive mix. However, after this week's meeting, we're back to where we started. We had a major "aha" moment which helped us identify exactly what we need to do and how to do it to help our client meet their goals. We're looking at an aggressive direct marketing strategy. Due to the nature of our client's services and the geographic area they serve, we know exactly who our target customers are, so a DM strategy makes the most sense to reach them and show them the value our client's services can add to their organizations. At this point, we're contacting national nonprofit associations to draw on existing market research that shows the actual impact our client's services have on improving their customers' effectiveness. From there, we'll be able to craft a compelling direct marketing campaign and give our clients the raw materials like mailing lists, names, and letters for their campaign as well as putting together an event for potential clients to gain exposure to our client's services and trial offers. Although we have to regroup and restrategize, our plan feels much more cohesive at this point, and we feel really confident it will get the results our client wants.

March 1, 2015

When we set out to gather information, there is always a temptation to capture as much information as possible. Sometimes, this temptation leads to spending more time and effort on information that may be good to know, but does not actually add much value to the goal. Also, if you are doing primary research, then it will unnecessarily lengthen your questionnaire which would mean that the respondents will have to spend more time in completing the survey. Therefore, it is necessary that before you start doing the actual primary research, you identify the precise need and requirement of doing the research and focus only on the required information and not the desired information!

In our case, although the client had recently done research, we could not fetch enough relevant data to create a customer perception matrix. Hence, we have decided to conduct another research survey with a goal to gather data that will help us create the perception matrix. A critical question that still remains unanswered is, "who sends out the questionnaire - whether the client or the consultants (us)?"

The benefit of having the client send out the questionnaire to their clients is that the target audience already knows them and hence, the probability of receiving a greater number of responses is higher than if we were to send out the questionnaire to the target respondent group. At the same time, the drawback of this approach is that the responses might be positively or negatively biased towards the client, due to the respondent's prior knowledge of the client.

Perhaps, in the next blog I will be able to share my experiences of creating the perception matrix.

March 10, 2014

I’ve encountered some challenges in developing a channel strategy for my client. As an online retailer, my client has the potential to reach a very broad market through major online retailers and through their own website. When I initially considered a channel strategy for my client I thought strategies to increase sales on their website that would include driving traffic to the site and marketing products directly to the consumer.

However, my client has a strong presence on the major online retailers and they hope to increase sales in existing markets and to expand to other online retailers. It is a challenge to market products as a reseller because my client’s ability to promote their brand and to communicate their dynamic variable is limited by the online retailers’ rules regarding what can and cannot be included in an ad. The difficulties re-creating a shopping experience online (touch and feel, seller’s expertise, etc) that every e-commerce site faces are compounded when reselling through an online retailer because resellers must work within strict presentation guidelines.

I’ve been considering tactics to work within and work around these guidelines including changing the copy and content of my client’s reseller (online) storefront, and reworking how the warranty and certification information is presented. I will prioritize these two areas because they are things that my client can change quickly and without going beyond the limits imposed by the online retailers. After doing research about online consumer electronics market, I found that customer service --- especially ease of returns and sellers’ ability to help troubleshoot--- is equally important to consumers as price and ease of shopping online. I will incorporate findings from this research as I develop tactics for improving my client’s presence on online retails.

It will be a challenge to figure out how these two sets of tactics fit together into one channel strategy. I have been considering them separately, but I am not sure that will be a productive position as the project goes forward. I think that I initially needed to consider them separately to understand two very different problems, but to support each other and I'll need to integrate them more fully.

February 10, 2014

Well I have started my investigations regarding what are the current problems Price Hill is facing. I even spoke to my client's marketing team. From initial fact finding and discussions it is clear that media is having a great influence on the public. I spoke to my Cincinati friends and asked them whether they knew anything about Price Hill. I have got mixed responses, few know that it exists and few dont. What I have found is its overshadowed by other city neighborhoods because of lack of awareness. I've finished my Competitive matrix and planning to take more time understanding the problem.

Also City of Cincinnati Community Development every year selects a few city neighborhoods to work with them to address the issues. Its known as Neighborhood Enhancement Program (NEP). Its a 90-day collaborative Asleffort between City departments, neighborhood residents and community organizations. So this year Price Hill has been selected and I'm glad to know that my capstone project will be utilized in the NEP.